


Invasive Species

by Saentorine



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Bows & Arrows, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Deer, Elves, Environmentalism, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Giant Spiders, Hunters & Hunting, Metaphors, Mirkwood, Pacifism, Spiders, Trauma, in-universe politics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-08
Updated: 2020-09-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:54:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26363773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saentorine/pseuds/Saentorine
Summary: Believing Sauron to have been soundly defeated, Thranduil denies that the encroaching spiders are anything to be concerned about. But there are limits to peace and tolerance of enemies who would destroy you first.(Kind of a metaphor for dealing with fascists)
Relationships: Legolas Greenleaf & Thranduil
Kudos: 21





	Invasive Species

**Author's Note:**

> Miss me with the “Elves are vegetarian” fanon; in _The Hobbit_ Thorin’s company smells roasting meat when they approach the Mirkwood elves’ flash mob parties.

_For Wood-elves were not goblins, and were reasonably well-behaved even to their worst enemies, when they captured them. The giant spiders were the only living things they had no mercy upon._  
-From _The Hobbit_

***

Legolas padded silently through the dark wood. Even with the autumn sun at its apex, the forest floor was cast in shadow by the thick canopy of browning foliage above. A stagnant, muddy stream wound its way around the gnarled roots of old growth. Fresh trails of cobwebs looped over branches and hung limp in tatters. An outsider might have found such scenery depressing and foreboding, but as Legolas had known little else, to his mind it was perfectly satisfactory hunting conditions.

He paused some distance from the stream, concealing himself behind the drying leaves clinging to wizened branches. A trim hart had stopped to drink the dark water, blissfully unaware of his approach. Barely breathing with his bow at the ready, Legolas waited for it to turn full broadside for a clear shot to the heart.

He froze as he detected faint movement just behind his target. A long, spindly leg emerged from the thicket—and then another, and another, until he could see the full thorax of a great spider. 

The sight did not startle him, for he had seen it before-- but it did rouse him. He held his aim, desperate to bag his quarry first, but it was too late; the spider struck, taking its prey off guard from behind with swift jab to its flank. The hart stiffened and collapsed to the ground.

Legolas released a silent sigh and withdrew his bow. There was no use fighting off the spider for its kill, for the poison had already tainted the meat—and he had no interest in lingering to watch the grotesque wrapping of the paralyzed victim. He had had several opportunities already and once was enough. While the spider rustled in the brush with its tinkering of silk, Legolas stole away as quietly as possible, knowing the spider would have no qualms in securing another victim to preserve for a later day.

He passed some futile hours waiting in a perch he had prepared above one of the more popular drinking spots before he gave up hope of another chance, then returned to his father’s halls.

***

Legolas’s agitation was obvious when he returned empty-handed.

“Nothing today?” Thranduil asked lightly, almost teasing. He could not take his son’s disappointment in his hunts too seriously. The Elvenking had learned sword and bow in his youth by the necessity of war, and he was grateful that Legolas’s chief experience in weapons was for the simple procurement of food. His skills were honed should they ever be necessary in defense of their realm, but for now the greatest danger he faced was falling out of a tree stand. It was a blessing that his primary despair was a day without a prize. 

“I had another kill thwarted by a spider,” Legolas admitted bitterly. “They have become fierce competition.” 

“We are not the only creatures to hunt large game,” Thranduil reminded him, though bears and such were rare to see these days. “Just because we have been the chief hunters of this land for some time does not mean it is our dominion alone.”

“But they don’t hunt _fairly_ ,” he protested. “While I waited for a clean kill shot, the spider approached to poison it from behind. They do not pay mind to the waning and waxing of the herd, but hunt to excess and leave corpses waiting suspended for weeks. I have seen yearlings and fawns strung up in their larders. How is an honorable hunter to compete?”

“They are spiders!” Thranduil laughed. “You cannot blame them for their nature.”

“We have never seen spiders of this size before. Does it not concern you that they do not belong here?”

“Not everything that is not native does not _belong_ ,” he replied, thinking of their own bloodline. The contingent of Sindar his father had led from Doriath had assimilated so thoroughly with the native woodland folk that they were scarcely recognizable to their distant kin aside from their language.

“It’s getting worse. Their numbers have been increasing beyond the natural rate,” Legolas insisted, “and so have their kills. What if they deplete the deer faster than the deer can sustain themselves? They can lay hundreds of eggs in the time a doe can bear a single fawn.”

“We are hardly starving,” Thranduil assured him. “We could stand a short time without venison to allow the herd to restore itself. It is the season for pheasants—perhaps you might turn your attentions there? And so far the autumn has been rich in other bounty; there are nuts, apples, and squash in abundance.” 

Legolas made a clicking his throat, clearly still unsatisfied. “It does not concern you that a new species, never before known in these parts, is suddenly encroaching? You do not wonder where they are coming from, or why?”

A chill struck Thranduil’s spine as he recognized what his son was implying. Indeed, he _had_ considered it, but whenever his thoughts drifted towards the evil that had once driven them to battle in the South, he forced them quickly from his mind-- with a glass of wine, if necessary. Surely it was not so. The Enemy had been soundly defeated in the last age. They lived in a peaceful time. The spiders were spiders, and nothing more. 

“We may try some means of deterring them from our hunting grounds,” he offered. “It is known that they avoid lavender, rosemary, and mint.”

Legolas seemed skeptical the arachnid he had seen would be daunted by a few herbs, but he did not argue. While Men and Dwarves took to carving stone, building walls, cutting forests, tilling the soil, and ever bending nature to their wants, the first children of Ilúvatar did not tamper with creation recklessly, especially in the woodland realm. They partook of what plants and game they needed and gave a little encouragement here and there— tending the berry bushes that flourished best nestled in the roots of particular trees, scattering clover and grass that kept families of deer close to their halls-- but by and large whatever changes endured by the Greenwood over the millennia had not been the work of their folk.

There was no need to move harshly against these creatures of the forest. The last war and the loss of so many of their kin had been an aberration in their way of life-- and what had been the purpose of so much death if not so that their children and grandchildren could finally live their promised peace?

***

“I don’t think it’s working” -- was Legolas’s assessment after a low barrier garden of fragrant herbs had been given a few weeks to flourish. A return to the king’s halls was now met with wafts of appetizing aroma, which lent cheer to the dank surrounding forest but did not seem to make it any less hospitable to the intruders, either. He had seen spiders take great, dainty steps right over their planted patches. “If anything, they are growing bolder. Are you sure they are not _attracted_ to the scents?”

“Give it time,” Thranduil replied. If nothing else, the Eldar always had time.

“Can’t we just . . . ” Legolas did not finish the thought, but it hung palpable in the air between them: the neat thwack of a bowstring and thud of an arrow into the fleshy arachnid underbelly.

Thranduil frowned. Was it juvenile to wish to move so quickly against the mere suggestion of an enemy? They would not, of course, _eat_ the slain spiders; it would be a culling, an extermination, a massacre for the retaking of realm and rule. In his own youth he had fantasized slaying enemies he knew only by name and felt such excitement, even bloodlust, marching into the plains of Dagorlad. Minutes into the charge, that excitement changed to horror. It must be a curse of the young to lust for bloodshed before truly understanding its weight.

“They have not threatened us, only a food supply to which we have numerous alternatives,” he replied. “There is no need to harm them rashly.”

***

The switch to pheasants and ducks had proved fruitful in keeping meat on their tables. The greedy spiders preferred larger game so long as it was available, though the deer were growing scarcer by the day.

Legolas waited in the brush with his companions, ready to jump the small flock of ducks feeding in a still pool. When the birds scattered, he shifted his sights to the sky, following the trajectory of their flight. He fired and his concentration shattered into a proud grin as his arrow sent one plummeting from flight. A handful of ducks fell in tandem and his companions roused to track down their prizes.

Just as Legolas stood himself, he felt something sharp strike his thigh. His immediate thought was friendly fire from one of his fellow hunters, but the wound stung far beyond what he would expect from folk who wouldn’t dream of using poisoned arrows. A wave of sharp tingling spread up his leg like a wasp sting, and the dread of it sped up his heart and the poisoning in tandem. Blood thudded in his ears as his vision began to grey around the edges.

In his last moment of consciousness, he felt the bristly caress of an oversized leg accompanied by a scented wave of lavender before he succumbed to darkness.

***

Legolas came to when he landed with a thud on hard ground. His body felt swollen but constricted, pushing against something wrapped around him. He tried to open his eyes but found them sticky with heavy sleep—and something else, something _literally_ sticky. 

He groaned as his companions pulled away the gummy silk that bound him, wiping the residue from his eyes with still-numb fingers. His hair was tangled in a nest of viscid fiber and his stomach wriggled unpleasantly with the lingering effects of the poison. When he had finally regained his senses well enough to speak, he had only one question: “Did you kill it?”

“We fought it back,” they replied.

Even if it was expected, their feeble response stuck like a slap. Legolas had not threatened the spider; he had not even known it was there. He and his companions had not been in its territory, the hollow where they protected their eggs and hung their kills for safekeeping. The spider had attacked him, and all that had been done to avenge him was to simply chase it off to safety. That was no justice. It stung like a judgement weighed against the value of his own life: the spider’s right to harm him greater than his own right not to be harmed.

His own bow having been lost in the scuffle, he seized one from his company, then turned to sprint into the thicket.

“Where are you going?” one of them called after, though he already knew. “Your father does not wish us to hunt the spiders!”

“We are not the hunters,” Legolas replied fiercely. “We are the _prey_.”

Without subtlety, barely attempting to conceal the noise of his tracking through the forest, he found his way to the spiders’ hollow. His companions followed close, torn between the command of their king some distance away and his son just before them—who might soon need their aid again.

Legolas had never seen battle, but what ensued must have been close. Sensing their aggressors, spiders emerged from their cover and converged upon their assailants, hissing and jabbing with their stingers. Legolas fired first, but soon all Elves were upon them with their arrows and jabbing them with their own steel in range. The forest rang with the shrieks and cries of enemy upon enemy until the hollow was finally still and silent-- every spider dead.

They made a silent procession home, carrying the exanimate bodies of two other companions rendered unconscious by spider-poison to recover in the safety of their halls. It was only then that a creeping sense of shame sneaked upon him, not unlike the spider itself.

He did not fear the king’s wrath, for as his son he would never be subject to his harshest penalties—but he did dread his disappointment. Perhaps he had gone too far to slay not only the perpetrator but his kin. Was he no better than a spider himself, to have sought out his enemies and slain them in their home? Was he a disgrace to his father, grandfather, and their people who respected and protected all living creatures in the forest? The dishonor prickled and burned within him.

But the horrified injustice of the spider’s first attack still pricked in tandem. The spiders had done nothing but harm to the forest and all that dwelt there. They had all but wiped out the deer, they would destroy the Elves, and they would destroy the ducks and pheasant and on to the squirrels and songbirds until there was nothing left. His folk were the only creatures with a chance of defending themselves against them—but the longer they tolerated the spiders’ presence, the deeper that evil would take root and the harder it would be to eradicate in the end.

How could his father be in denial of this?

***

Thranduil was pleased that their efforts had paid off in time. The herb gardens strategically placed around their halls and hunting grounds were in lush bloom and the spiders seemed to have decreased as quickly as they had flourished. There was less mad scrambling of his people into the protection of his halls when the spiders roamed just outside. There were not as many sightings reported on hunts.

“It seems our defenses are finally working as intended,” he observed one day as Legolas returned with a brace of pheasants. Despite the spiders’ absence, the deer population was still precarious. “I haven’t seen our spider companions in some time.”

Legolas stared at him. “You haven’t seen them _because I killed them_.”

Thranduil was too startled to speak. It was only then that he noticed what he had not before. Weariness. Fear. Shame. A few oddly short patches of hair-- cut away to remove spider silk? Whatever physical wounds or poisoning Legolas had endured would have healed quickly and easily by his Elven constitution, but the terror and disgrace of having been victimized left their own wounds, and those wounds _stuck_. He could now read them vividly in his son the same way his kin might read his own battle-grief in him.

“You were attacked,” he concluded, his voice fragile. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I took my own revenge after it happened,” Legolas admitted. “But you had made it clear that we were to tolerate them, to not act rashly, to not wage unnecessary war--"

“We are already at war,” Thranduil replied. The truth in this realization was like a blast of freezing water, and the same terror dawned upon him that his father must have had felt when Gil-Gilead appeared at their doorstep to entreat their alliance. “I am sorry I didn’t realize it until now.”

**Author's Note:**

> This actually started with my friend buying some herbal spray to repel spiders and me remarking how futile that sounded, and then pondering how amusing it would be if Mirkwood tried those methods first . . .
> 
> . . . and then somehow it turned into a timely metaphor on the limits of peace and tolerance for enemies bent on your destruction, who would never compromise with _you_.


End file.
